Webcomic / The Property of Hate

Our hero, and RGB.

"I say... Would you like to be a Hero?"

— RGB

The Property of Hate is a webcomic by Sarah Jolley (aka Modmad aka Fred aka Albionhands) that began publication in early 2012 and usually updates on Sundays.

A young girl is suddenly awoken by a strange, dapperly dressed man who refers to himself simply as RGB. He is formal in speech and odd in the head, or in the CRT television set where his head should be. He asks her if she would like to become a hero, and though she answers with gusto, she has no idea of what will be expected of her as she leaves her home for a world in the skies.

The journey across the clouds takes her to a world badly in need of a hero, where lies and fears are very real and very dangerous. The hero's courage helps her survive her first encounter with fear itself, but her very young age — and RGB's initial refusal to explain anything — make it a difficult and dangerous journey for her.

Over the course of the story, Hero meets various beings both benevolent and malevolent and eventually comes to grips with the strange world she's now a part of. RGB, on his part, grapples with a past he either only vaguely remembers or isn't proud of, people whose relationships with him run gamut from affable to hostile and a world-saving quest that just isn't going right.

The comic can be found on its own site here.

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This comic provides examples of:

• And I Must Scream: What happened to TOby, though he can still communicate with others. After he was torn to pieces and stitched back together with his own nerves.
• Animate Inanimate Object:
  • The armchair in the House of Paint. As we learn later, her name is Gladys and she's a Silent Snarker.
  • Not to mention Assok, the sentient sock puppet.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: The Hero and RGB find themselves ailed by (non-antropomorphic and of varied levels of sentience) manifestations of such turmoils as fear and grief.
  • One of the characters - Time - is a rabbit representing the past, present and future. He later sends Hero and RGB to the future to free one of the sun fragments from Lake Lacrimose.
  • The Butterfly is a creature that tells Hero to be wise and in actuality is a manifestation of anxiety.
• Arc Villain: Several, all of them working for Hate. Click is actually the first of them that we meet and seemingly the most active, serving as one for the Market.
  • The Butterfly aka Anxiety serves as one for the Elastic Valley and the House of Lead, having successfully stolen one of Hero's eyes.
• Art Evolution: The comic undergoes this quite a bit as the story progresses, with the first obvious noticeable example being RGB and Hero's trip to the Market. Later chapters gradually start incorporating more detailed designs that look absolutely stunning.
• Backstory: In "Arret", RGB gives his to Hero, explaining how he became The Chooser of the One and how he fared with the first hero (badly).
• Bait-and-Switch: Chapter 18's intro page sets up the flashback to RGB's past. The chapter name itself even notes that it's "too soon for this part" before moving onto the actual intro page for Chapter 18: Dolly Zoom.
• Bazaar of the Bizarre: The Ensemble, of the bartering vein.
• Big Bad: The main villain is Hate, who mostly acts through her henchmen and has yet to be seen in person.
• Big "NO!": Preceded by a Little "No" after being presented the horseshoes he's supposed to wear, RGB's reaction to the title of Chapter 13, "Hoofers", is both this and aSkywardScream.
• Bilingual Bonus: Tinker appears to speak in Morse Code whereas Melody, true to her name, speaks in musical notation.
• Bleak Level:
  • Upon getting through the crystals, Hero and RGB make it to the place that should be a forest - only to find much widened Sandbar with bits of machinery and other bits scattered around.
  • The House of Lead is rather bleak as well, being a monochromatic Eldritch Location that changes appearance as Hero and RGB descend further into the house.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The comic tends to do this every so often, being rather metafictional.
  RGB: Is my sketch showing?
• Cathartic Crying: Hero has a good cry in "Flood", encouraged by RGB who tells her not to keep it inside. After putting Hero to bed, when she sleepily calls him "dad", RGB who was given a heart by Madras, hides in the lower bunk to have a cry himself.
• Chiaroscuro: Why RGB's brightening in the darkness would not help, it would only make the dark more striking. Followed by his realization of how to fix it.
  • Chapter 17 is titled Chiaroscuro, and it begins with Hero and RGB finding the Sandbar having taken over the entire forest.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Several minor characters come back later, often with significant results.
  • Magnus, who first appears as a background character, later saves Hero and RGB from Click's laser cannon.
• Cliffhanger: Quite a bit. Because the comic updates on Sundays, and Mod sometimes takes breaks inbetween updates to visit family or travel, fans are left hanging often.
• Comically Missing the Point: Played with. One of RGB's dreams is of a man doing a stand-up comedy routine about a visit to the doctor. The man keeps insinuating that he might be mentally unwell, but the doctor just dismisses his claims and gives him superficial solutions (i.e. stop looking at the mirror if you hate what you see in it, stand close to the radiator if your hands are shaking). It's all but stated that this is a situation that happened to RGB when he was alive and human, so it's also played for drama.
  "Doctor Doctor:" Oh it's a very simple medicine— Out of Sight, Out of Mind!
  The Man: But Doctor— what if I'm already out of my mind?
  "Doctor Doctor": Then get out of my sight!
• Continuity Nod: Upon catching Hero climbing into the House of Lead through the window, RGB intends to throw her out of the window. Hero's response is to call him a stinkbutt blighterpoop, a reference to Assok saying the latter word after RGB and Hero's Volleying Insults back in "POV".
• Deliberately Monochrome: RGB's nightmares are always portrayed in dark, oppressive monochrome, befitting their theme - his own death.
  • To highlight its cold, stagnant nature, the House of Lead is portrayed in drab, dull greys in stark contrast to both RGB and Hero retaining their colours.
• Disney Death: Hero, when she falls out of the tree and is apparently impaled on a branch. It turns out that the hole that she got from being stabbed by a fear opened back up while she was arguing with RGB, so she's fine.
  • It's also possible that RGB and Hero haven't seen the last of Click if this page is any indication.
• Double-Meaning Title: "Target Audience" can refer to RGB and Hero being Click's target audience and the market denizens being the audience who watch Click's attempted execution of RGB and his downfall after his attempts to manipulate Hero don't work.
  • "Arret" is the French word for stop, which can either refer to RGB and Hero stopping to take a break from their adventure or RGB having been forced to stop being a Hero and recruit someone else to be the Hero in his stead.
  • "Flood" refers to the Market flooding and the resulting evacuation and also the flood of emotions RGB feels upon realizing that Hero views him as her dad.
• Downer Beginning: Oh boy, the early chapters of the comic once the Hero makes it to the Land of Make Believe are grim. The Hero is made to deal with shadowy monsters in an unfamiliar world where everything seems so dark and dreary. It's not until she and RGB meet Assok that things begin to lighten up.
• Don't Ask, Just Run: RGB's reaction to meeting the Fears the first time. Subverted when the Hero refuses to leave the Idea even after RGB explains what it is.
  • This happens again once RGB sees Click. Unfortunately for them, Click finds them and tries to murder them both.
• Eldritch Location: The House of Lead turns out to be this. Starting as a simple room with a window, it then leads to a hall of empty picture frames, then down several flights of stairs leading to a Hall of Mirrors shrouded in darkness when then leads to the basement which resembles a train station or a warehouse used for keeping movie set props. All of which seem to be shaped by Hero and RGB's personal feelings.
• Elite Mook: Its implied that Fears and Griefs are this due to RGB's comments that the former don't normally appear near the Lake of Tears and his dread upon seeing the latter in the Plains of Doubt.
• The End of the World as We Know It: The entire story is built on the premise that RGB and Hero must prevent the end of the world, with several other heroes having tried and failed to do so. Come the events of "Casting" and it seems that Hate got impatient enough to just finish it herself instead of waiting for the world to end on its own.
• Evil Counterpart: The House of Lead -introduced in "Double Exposure"- is one to the House of Paint. Unlike the House of Paint, the House of Lead is a grim looking grey house, simplistic, cold and clinical inside in stark contrast to warm-coloured and easily warpable by Hero's imagination interiors of the House of Paint.
• Exact Words:
  • RGB once commented that nothing in the world was stronger than the trees, but once he and Hero come to the forest they planned to use for a shortcut, he comes to the sobering realization that nothing was indeed stronger and destroyed the forest wholesale.
  • Later, he has Hero promise she won't enter the door of the House of Lead. She gets in through the window.
• Face Doodling: Hero doodles a moustache and glasses on RGB's screen as he's sleeping.
• Fisher King: House of Paint responds to the owner's imagination and will. If the owner wants to change furniture, all they have to do is think about it. The downside of this is - if the owner isn't thinking about what the house is like, the house becomes more and more abstract.
• Fisher Kingdom: The world the story takes place in apparently has some of these properties, as it causes Hero to get Identity Amnesia.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The phrase "We Split" is a phrase that showed up as early as Rushes and again during Dolly Zoom. If this official art of RGB and Negative is any indication, its likely that all of this may lead up to RGB and Negative splitting apart.
  • During Double Exposure, if you fold page 519 similarly to the chapter intro page, the dialogue read much differently by hinting at Negative's importance in the chapter.
  Hero (folded page): Another you.
  RGB(folded page): The other me. The two used to be one. I am haunted myself.
  Hero (folded page): ...........
  • The pictures of Hero's wall during The Hook foreshadowed the appearance of the Idea, the House of Paint and the Tempers later on.
  • The term 'Neutral' appeared in the beginning of Click. Hero later used that term to describe RGB when Click asked her if she thought that RGB was evil.
  • In Target Audience, it's stated that those who destroy the market will be destroyed in kind. Guess what happens to Click during "Ex Position"? The chapter ended with his remaining eye falling onto a counter, which set up the possibility that someone would pick it up... Later on, Ratfink stole Click's eye and wound up being forced to share his body with Click, who intended to find the rest of his body parts which is shown in later chapters such as "Flood" and "Double Exposure".
  • The Butterfly being an antagonist who stole Hero's eyes after she decided to trust RGB was foreshadowed throughout the few interactions she had with Hero and when Time offhandedly mentioned that Hero would lose her eyes later on during her first meeting in him in "Inbetweens". During Hero's second encounter with the Butterfly, she showed up right after Hero bored the Idea to death and during their third, it perched itself on Hero's back and later left in a huff. In both cases, the Butterfly tried to erode Hero's trust in RGB under the guise of "being wise".
  • Early on The Hero said that "heroes wear green", a description that fit Assok, Tinker, Dial, Toby, and RGB in Chapter 25: Arret back when he first fought Hate.
  • During "Inbetweens", Time mentioned that stories don't care who the hero is and that they simply need a protagonist to exist. Later on in "Casting", RGB mentioned that he had been recruiting heroes to keep the story going so that the world didn't end and that he had been relying on how the story doesn't care about heroes to keep this plan afloat.
  • During "Cut in", the Guardians decided to throw the Idea out with a remark from a market denizen that if it was a good Idea, it would float. A few pages later, the Idea became a fish and several chapters later during "Casting", the Idea had become a boat that floated above the water, which means it really was a good idea.
  • When RGB and Hero made it to Elastic Valley, the former tried to explain to the latter about Tempers but was cut off by TG before he could explain what happened when they're not fixed. A few chapters later, RGB explained to Hero about a previous hero implied to be Click, and how he left the soldier hero to die. As it turned out Click lost his temper and was killed by a Grief.
  • When Hero and RGB first see the end of the world, there was a drawing of a figure riding a creature similar to the Idea. A few pages later, we see The Idea turned into a boat that rode over the sea.
  • There are various hints that RGB was once a human who had a job as an actor: The nightmare scenes implied that RGB was an actor who performed various stunts, but none of them seemed to be the cause of his death. In several cases, such as in Pages 313 or 513, pieces of RGB's human self such as his wrist or his neck could be seen whereas his full body was seen during Chapter 18's bait and switch intro page and then again as part of a hallucination during his fight with The Butterfly.]]
• Framing Device: Chapter 9, Page 165 introduced an ominous one via a pair of scissors. Their presence is nothing short of Paranoia Fuel for the audience.
• Flower Motifs: Negative RGB was associated with blue roses, which appear again when The Butterfly cuts RGB with it's wings during their fight in Elastic Valley.
• Hall of Mirrors: The protagonists were surprised to discover one inside the House of Lead, though it didn't last very long once RGB accidently shattered the mirrors with his cane due because he jumped back in surprise after Hero emerged from a trapdoor she found.
• He Was Right There All Along: The scissors were already bad enough in the early chapters but become far creepier when it's revealed that they were weapons used by Hate to get rid of her enemies.
• Hurricane of Puns: RGB gets this mood every once in a while.
  • For instance, here, revolving around time.
  • Once more, with feeling. And that feeling is Belligerent Sexual Tension.
  • And again, about RGB's missing body parts: He's spineless, he has no guts, etc.
• I Call It "Vera": Discussed and Deconstructed. Hero noticed that a lot of the objects lying in the Sands of Regret were vehicles, to which RGB responded by explaining this trope, namely how people will give their vehicles names and "personalities", which caused the vehicles to manifest in the realm; however, since their owners still do not consider them living beings in their own right, they never possessed the will needed to truly exist within the realm, and broke down in the Sands. It was implied that the vehicles do want to be alive, but since their owners never saw them as such, they're unfortunately doomed to break down again upon the sands.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The chapter titles are all filming terms.
• I Have Nothing to Say to That: During "POV", RGB, upon receiving an... eloquent message from Hero via Assok.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: If you count getting shanked by a Fear, this has happened to Hero more than once. RGB got shanked by a Fear, as well, right at the start.
• Inherently Funny Words: During "POV", both Hero and RGB both burst out laughing after Assok combined the insults they've been flinging at each other into:
  Assok:"Blighterpoop."
• Jumped at the Call: Hero. After she said goodbye to her mum.
• Just Before the End: The setting. RGB's task was averting the apocalypse, but he's been, as of yet, unsuccessful.
• Lame Pun Reaction: TOby has one to RGB's time-related Hurricane of Puns.
• Liminal Being: RGB, asked what "neutral" means, said it's when something was neither one thing nor another, or was between the two. ^note  This is the literal meaning of Latin "neutrum"
• Liminal Time: The beings in the market place are inbetween times or existences — they can't stay forever. (Hero compared it to a railway station.)
• Loophole Abuse: Hate's wager to RGB was to find a hero to prevent the end of the world so their "story" can end properly. After a time, RGB realized that her wording was vague enough that the story only ends and the wager fulfilled when he finds the hero, and not that he saved the world.
• Meaningful Name: RGB means Red Green Blue (the additive color model used in the first color television broadcast, as well as the CRT and LCD monitors and TV sets that followed it).
• Mundane Utility: One could actually use RGB's head as a television, but only when he's asleep, rendering him unable to awakened when his head is used as a TV.
• No Name Given: The Hero. Actually, she has Identity Amnesia complete with Name Amnesia. She didn't even realize it until she actually thinks about it.
• Not a Game: The Hero and RGB bitterly accused each other of treating it like a game in one fight.
• Painting the Medium: The comic tended to do this on the occasion by having characters speak with different type of text boxes or various visual details.
  • Characters like Melody or Click had unique nuances to their speech. The former spoke in music notes while the latter had extra tails added to his speech depending on how many of his mouths were speaking.
  • Visual details tended to showcase how The World of Make Believe works or how it was affected by other characters. In "Double Exposure", the House of Lead's panels were formatted like a window, with the frame being smeared after RGB attempts to open the window and his panicked realization that he needed to get the door.)
  • The House of Lead was hidden inside a folded page. Hero and RGB literally unfolded it at the beginning of the chapter to find the house. Once they actually made in into the house, the pages tended to subtly affected by the presentation^note i.e the comic panels were smudged after RGB tried to open the window, text bubbles fitted inside picture frames, a page had lines drawn to resemble a cracked mirror etc.
• Perspective Magic: The House of Paint could be, if you walked away a bit, folded it and put in your pocket like a drawing.
• Precision F-Strike: Done in a doubly literal sense here by Melody, who can only speak in musical notes and symbols.
• Pun: The series has so many both obvious and hidden that it'd have it's own page if it were to list every single one. For example, most of the chapters are named after film terminology and camera tricks.
• Red Sky, Take Warning: During Hate's apocalypse in "Casting", the sky turns red as stars fall from the sky and the seas rise.
• Rewatch Bonus: Rereading the comic tends to reveal a lot of information that the reader won't notice the first time around:
  • One of the earliest examples is during the first two chapters once Hero makes it to The World of Make Believe since there are several established details such as the Butterfly showing up whenever RGB's attention is elsewhere, or when a Fear impales RGB and drags him to the lake to force him to look at his own reflection rather than drown him as most first time readers assume.
  • Page 305 reveals several names of the past heroes. This adds more meaning to Assok, TOby, Dial, Tinker, Tailor, Julienne and Melody's introductions.
  • Click's entire screed against RGB in Target Audience hits very differently when the reader later learns that he was the second hero after RGB himself and that RGB left him to die due to being unable to deal with Click's path to destruction. His accusations that RGB had several victims and him asking Hero what heroes do to monsters end up having far more basis than initial impressions would have you believe when its later revealed that RGB was bringing in multiple heroes in order to delay the end of the world and Click is implied to have been quite violent as a Hero, showing no care for a Temper he trampled on and using one of its shards as a makeshift knife.
  • The Butterfly's actions toward Hero take on a far more sinister undertone once you learn that their true identity is Anxiety, a creature who can control Doubts. Instead of being a mentor who wants Hero to become wise, they're actually trying to lead her astray by trying to convince her that RGB is untrustworthy, and blinding Hero to the truth by playing on their anxieties and doubts.
• Room Full of Crazy: During "Double Exposure", as Hero and RGB travel deeper into the House of Lead, they end up in a room full of digital and analog clocks, representing that the house itself has become consumed by it's own loneliness.
• Scenery Porn: Lots and lots of it.
• Shout-Out: From classic movies to alchemy, the author loves putting in references. Some of these were changed to generic or Public Domain references when they were put to print:
  • Specifically, the "dream" RGB has while sleeping in the graveyard involves him being "off the mark" as a house falls around him; interestingly, Keaton himself was almost killed in this stunt, due to being slightly off the mark enough that the house broke one of his arms.
  • At one point, to distract an Idea, Hero changes RGB's channel. The first words his TV head say are "And now for something completely different..." When she turns to another channel, one of the snippets of audio heard is "[fr]ankly, my dear, I d[on't give a damn!] "
  • Hero in Chapter 2 sings a bit of "I'm going to Go Back There Someday" from The Muppet Movie. In the print release this changes to "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles".
  • Time, a rabbit-like creature, says "When they catch us, they will kill us. But first, they must catch us." before he sends Hero and RGB off to the future to retrieve one of the Sun pieces.
  • Many of RGB's color palettes are a reference to one thing or another, such as the purple coord being a reference to Paul McCartney's in Yellow Submarine or his outfit in "Wardrobe" being based on The Dress (a meme concerning an argument on whether a dress was black and blue or gold and white).
  • When Anxiety is fading away due to Hero and RGB's attention being focused on trying to escape the House of Lead instead of them, their dialogue briefly references Navi's most well known quote.
• Standard Snippet: Parodied Trope. When playing a gondolier, Hero obviously means to sing O sole mio, but just as obviously doesn't know the lyrics. Hence:
  Hero: O, salty mayo! That makes me wee...
• Stealth Pun: In spades.
  • Page 23 introduces the Lie, a cute little thing that happens to be white in colour. In other words, it's a white lie.
  • A sleeping RGB's speech bubble is blank white - it's white noise.
  • Chapter 9 has Julienne and Melody cut off from the rest of the group with scissors and also cut out of the story
  • During Chapter 11: Page 192, RGB literally steals a kiss from the Black Market. He then gives it to Madras as a farewell gift.
  • Chapter 25 has RGB's clothes cut and is fighting Hate who uses a giant pair of scissors. She clearly intends to cut his story short.
  • "Cutting Room" has The Butterfly reveal themselves to be Anxiety, as a play on how having butterflies in your stomach is a common expression for feeling anxious and nervous.
• Superpowered Evil Side: RGB manifests one after being knocked out by a Grief, referred to as Negative RGB. It later appears as a hallucination during the Butterfly's appearance, and later saves Hero later on in the desert. It takes until Double Exposure for Hero to be able to open up to RGB enough to mention him.
• Take That!:
  • This line of dialogue during "Flood" when Miss Cell is holding an announcement to evacuate the market.
  Electrocardiogram Head: Are you kidding?! Do you KNOW how many Fears are out there these days?
  Ghost Monster: Better staying here than dying of fright!
  Lizard Monster: Idiots! If we're trapped in here, we'll be forced to recycle the same material over and over! What do you think this is, Hollywood?
• Tarot Motifs: Several of them exist, and can be bought from Mod's Topataco.
  • Hero's card is 0: The Fool, an arcana representing the beginning of a person's journey and their limitless potential. The Hero is a young girl who is the latest of RGB's heroes and whose story involves her coming to grips with the new world that awaits her with all it's ups and downs. When reversed, The Fool represents immaturity and ignorance, representing that Hero has much to learn about her world and her place within it.
  • RGB's card is I: The Magician, an arcana representing healing and creativity. RGB is a man who often makes creative use of what he has in order to escape most situations due to his reluctance to use violence. When reversed, The Magician represents working against your creativity, and a reluctance to communicate your ideas in hopes that someone else will do it instead. Though RGB is willing to help Hero, he's deeply afraid of having to explain the reasoning behind some of his darker actions, often choosing to leave it until a later time.
  • Madras's card II: The High Priestess, an arcana representing wisdom and a persons inner life, in addition to being a teacher for The Fool who wishes to develop their innate powers and become The Magician. Madras is implied to have some sort of relationship with RGB, and she is the one who gives Hero the House of Paint after she departs from The World of Make Believe to take part in her own story. When reversed, the High Priestess represents becoming absorbed in your own inner life to the detriment of everything else in your real life. The Market Guardians are inspired by the pillars depicted in this card (white on the left;black on the right), though they themselves don't appear in her tarot card.
  • Dial's card is V: The Hierophant, an arcana representing a master and their role as a teacher who passes down knowledge to new students. When reversed, The Hierophant represents a self-destructive, impulsive rebellion against the long held traditions and beliefs belonging to your lineage that serve as the foundations of your life.
  • Julienne and Melodys card is VI: The Lovers, an arcana which represents the challenges of a romantic relationship and how one must be willing to make sacrifices in order to come to a decision. Even when Hate tried to recreate them anew, they endured, and in the future RGB and Hero were sent to, they were still together. When reversed, The Lovers represents an interest in opposition, and going along the path halfheartedly and filled with unspoken resentments instead of making a decisive decision.
  • The Train of Thought's card is VII: The Chariot, an arcana representing the heady feeling of freedom and high achievements, signifying the feeling of power as the world opens up. When reversed, The Chariot represents reluctance to take charge of your life and take responsibility for the direction your life is taking.
  • Time's card is XVIII: The Moon, an arcana representing higher consciousness and test of ones integrity. Time himself is based off the Moon Rabbit, a mythical figure in eastern mythology, and in the story is a being who sees the past, present and future, even helping RGB and Hero by sending them to the future to find the third part of the Sun. When reversed, The Moon represents self delusion and dramatization of personal events, in addition to be caught up in one's emotions instead of trying to stay balanced.
  • The Light is XIX: The Sun, an arcana representing the self and where one's true self can be encountered in safety without fear of negativity. Ironically in the story RGB tells Hero during "Pitch", the Sun wears a mask because the world cannot gaze upon it's face without burning to ash. When reversed, The Sun represents presenting an inauthentic facade at the cost of supressing your true self.
• Tell Him I'm Not Speaking to Him: Starting on this page. An interesting example, as the messenger is only ever able to speak when copying someone else's words (albeit imperfectly).
• 10-Minute Retirement:
  • In "Arret", after Threshold Guardian takes the key off him, because it was stolen, RGB throws a fit, thinks out loud about the possibilities he has left and comes to the following conclusion:
  RGB: So, this is it. You're the last one, and with my track record: let's face it: show's over. Iris out. That's all, folks. We tried.

Then he and Hero decide they might as well take a break.

• During this break, he explains how things went bad with the first hero and how he ran away to Time, who helped him figure things out.

• Threshold Guardians: Our heroes encounter a literal one in chapter 24.
• The Wonderland: The setting is a place where lies, doubts, fears and ideas are tangible entities. The sun fell out of the sky and turned into trees and a ocean rests on top of a forest.
• Visual Pun:
  • Occasionally. For instance, on page 348 Hero is (briefly) on the fence about whether to go back for RGB or stay where he wanted her to stay. She is also sitting on a literal picket fence and jumps off it as soon as she's made her decision.
  • During "Cutting Room", after RGB tells Hero that the House of Lead has gone mad from it's own loneliness, Hero tries to reply only to be cut off with a loud sound of a cuckoo clock. RGB that it's one way of putting it.
• Volleying Insults: Hero and RGB's argument while he's trying to get her down from the first tree devolves into this. Then Assok combines the insults and causes Mood Whiplash.
• We Were Rehearsing a Play: When confronting Click in the Market, the locals get suspicious. RGB claims they're rehearsing for a movie and Click wants to play the villain, which prompts the locals into offering critique and distracting Click for long enough that RGB can put his plan in motion.
• Wham Line:
  • On Page 284 Click finally has RGB and Hero cornered, with full intent on revenge against RGB. He establishes his case by revealing that he has a good reason for wanting RGB dead.
  Click: Which is the greater crime - to destroy, or steal?
  Market Guardian (Bird): What meaning has this?
  Market Guardian (Horse): Speak.
  Click: You may have your justice - but let me first have mine: Upon the one who stole my life - the man who murdered "Me".
  • After RGB becomes frustrated with The Butterfly deliberately obfuscating their identity during "Cutting Room", and tells them to spit it out, The Butterfly reveals their true identity:
  The Butterfly: What lies between fear and doubt - with pure self loathing strung throughout? Feigning wisdom, floating free - What is my name...? ANXIETY.
• Vertigo Effect: One of the chapters is named Dolly Zoom in which RGB and Hero escape from the Nothing and make it to Elastic Valley.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Practically said word-for-word by RGB, with regards to Hero. The given reason is not that it's physically impossible to go back, but that wherever they are is something of a Fisher Kingdom and Hero now has Identity Amnesia; thus she is no longer the person she was and can't resume her old life; Time later confirms this by stating that Hero's old life (and story) ended when she became the Hero.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: Not necessarily, but a common theme within the story is how phenomena the mind comes up with can become very real and, consequentially, very dangerous.

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